clocks

7

George

On my third day, things feel like they're beginning to fall into a routine. He wakes first, sometimes I hear the shower at such ungodly hours of the morning that I have the urge to tell him to go back to bed.

He makes breakfast, he does whatever he needs to get done in the earlier hours of the morning whilst I sleep in. Then, once I roll downstairs, it's all back to the book, back to the notes, back to the 'can you talk today?'

It's raining out today. Dream explains the weather can go from zero to one hundred very easily out here. He tells me it'll probably be sweltering out again tomorrow. But the rain means we're stuck inside.

I was worried that after the lake, yesterday, he would be awkward, or even a little agitated with me. But when I appeared downstairs for breakfast this morning, he had smiled, and asked how I slept and if I'd like something to eat. So that was that dealt with. Now— I just have to stay away.

Don't hurt him, it can't be that hard.

We sit on the living room floor. I don't know why on the floor, he just says we have to sit on the floor and so we do. Today is harder, for some reason. His questions aren't making my brain flow like they usually do, and I'm really struggling with remembering.

"This isn't working," he sighs, after I've taken nearly a two minute pause trying to remember the simplest of things. I don't reject that statement, because he's right. This isn't working, at all.

He takes his notes from his lap, and sets them on the floor. Then, he stands up, and looks at the room around us with his hands on his hips.
I on-look curiously, as he reaches out to the blanket on the sofa, and puts it on the back, propped up by a pillow.

"What?" I ask, when he stretches across to grab one of the bigger pillows to keep the blanket up.

"In the kitchen drawer, beside the sink, there's string," he tells me. "Go grab it, and get more pillows from upstairs, just any that you see. And a bedsheet. I'll get everything else."

I stand, still more confused then anything. "But what's it for?" I call, running to the kitchen and pulling open the drawer. The string pokes out at me. I take it. He doesn't answer me, he's too busy darting down the hall to his office, a wide smile on his face.

Upstairs, I grab whatever pillows I can see, and I toss them down the stairs since there's no way I'll be able to carry all of them. Then, I find him a grey bedsheet, which I carry with me back down the stairs. I grab a couple of the pillows at the bottom of the stairs.

He's back in the living room, trapping blankets between the couch and the table, and underneath books on his bookshelves. I dump the bedsheets and some of the pillows, I toss him the string, and then I run to grab the rest of the pillows.

I drop down to the floor, on top of all his pillows as I watch him jump excitedly around the room, tying up string and dangling blankets over the string— and then I realize. He's making a fort.

"Will you hold these?" he asks, lifting up a set of string lights. It takes a lot inside of me not to start laughing. I stand, and hold one end of the lights as he sticks up the others around the inside of the fort.

"This is brilliant," I smile, helping him lift a blanket across the zig-zag of string. Once he's hung everything up and double checked that all the blankets and bedsheets are secure, he tosses the pillows down onto the floor.

I get comfy, but he shakes his head. "Wait here," he says, running from the room. I lay back on the pillows, hearing him run up the stairs. There's a small pause, before I hear his feet back on the stairs.